There's a Wedding
by Glistening Cerulean Eyes
Summary: After five years, Dalinar and Navani are finally getting married! It's going to be quite the memorable occasion.


The big day had finally arrived. The golden sunlight crept over the mountains around Urithiru, eventually alighting on the bedchamber of Highprince Dalinar Kholin. He wiggled around excitedly under his expensive sheets that had patterns of big warriors in their pyjamas fighting monsters he didn't recognise embroidered across it in bright colours. A small squeal of elation slipped through his usually guarded lips.

Today was the day he married Navani! If only Susan could see him now. Storms, he hoped Gavilar couldn't see him now. That might be uncomfortable. Maybe he needed to talk to an Ardent about that. Figure out whether or not people who had passed on could still watch their siblings kissing their past wives.

Alerted by the squeal, two people barged into the room. One was Kaladin, looking weirdly polished and prepared as usual, despite the fact that there was nobody else on Dalinar's guard detail anymore and Kaladin slept, in uniform, in a sleeping bag outside his door. The other was Eshonai, whose carapace glistened in the early morning light.

"Sir! Do I need to defend you from the inevitable assassins your rank and political views will attract?!" Kaladin barked, on guard, as always. Dalinar often thought it was as though Kaladin expected somebody to jump through his window.

"Kaladin, dude, chill out. There's no one to even send assassins any more! We have world peace now!" Dalinar emphasised this with some very firm, decisive hand gestures. Kaladin didn't seem to understand Dalinar's words, so he was hoping that by making clear hand gestures Kaladin would understand those instead. Potentially Kaladin was a visual learner. Dalinar had to try everything—he didn't want to be rude to the excited kid.

"It's good that you're awake," Eshonai said, ignoring Kaladin's routine inspection of the perimeter of the room. She was well used to Kaladin's jumpiness, having once been the cause of it. Eshonai was immaculately dressed in her finest Formalform tunic; her carapace was freshly buffed, and her thin hair was braided elegantly.

"Yeah, I wouldn't want to be late, " Dalinar chuckled, winking pointedly at both of them. Kaladin chuckled unsuccessfully, still scowling darkly and eyeing the window. He tried to surreptitiously check under Dalinar's bed for assassins, having forgotten that it was one of those beds that is like a mattress sitting on another mattress and not even the skinniest assassin could be wedged under it without suffering internal injuries.

"As best man, it is my duty to ensure you have a hearty breakfast," Eshonai interjected, firmly taking Kaladin by the shoulders and beginning to steer him out of the bedroom. Kaladin tried to protest, but Eshonai's broad shoulders made all his protests sound feeble.

"You know it's bad luck to see the groom before the wedding," she chided. Kaladin's shoulders slumped under her hands and he slunk out of the bedroom reluctantly.

"I'm going to make a coffee Eshonai!" he called through the closing door. "And I'm going to enjoy knowing that Dalinar is UNDER YOUR _PROTECTION_." The last bit was especially loud because Eshonai had closed, then locked, the door. Kaladin was subtly trying to tell Eshonai that he'd passed the monumental responsibility of Dalinar's life into her hands, but without making a scene. It was Dalinar's wedding day, after all, and Kaladin didn't want to stress the guy out with thoughts of assassins and the inevitability of death. He lashed himself to the distant third floor and casually hopped over the bannister with VIGILANCE.

"He's gone," said Eshonai, who had pressed her ear up against the door to listen for Kaladin's departure. She opened the basket she had brought with her and it was filled with ham and cheese croissants! Dalinar's favourite! He was so happy she had remembered. Of course it was _spicy_ ham, because he's a manly man and men eat spicy food. He scampered out of bed and they had a ham and cheese croissant picnic on the floor of his room. Eshonai had even brought cups for the orange juice, also his favourite. Now he remembered why she was the best man. Apart from having a wicked repertoire of sick dance moves that she could bust out at any opportunity, she was also STORMING considerate and she was Dalinar's best friend. They had had many fine adventures together.

"So we're having the wedding on top of the building," Eshonai said, tapping her pen against her checklist. "We thought the view would be great from up there, plus when Navani throws the bouquet things could get interesting."

"That sounds so exciting," said Dalinar through a happy mouthful of spicy ham croissant.

"Now, do you remember your vows?"

"Totally, my fine chummo," said Dalinar. "I memorised them by thinking about how at the end I get to kiss Navani."

"That's how you memorise everything," Eshonai said, deadpan. She ticked it off her checklist. "How about where you stand? Do you remember that?"

They moved through the checklist while Dalinar drank orange juice and thought about how lucky and excited he was. Here's a hint: it was a lot. Every now and then he got up, orange juice cup in one hand, croissant in the other, and did a small victory dance to celebrate.

Finally, it was time for Dalinar to dress in his fancy wedding clothes. He got out his nicest suit and put it on while Eshonai covered her eyes. Then she straightened his tie and helped him put his shiny grey shardplate over the top. He looked so cool. Everybody in Alethkar wanted to be like him, and was also secretly jealous of Navani but in, like, a professional way. Eshonai combed his hair for him because his shardplate gloves weren't capable of that sort of fine motor control and it had gotten all mussed up when he got dressed.

"Thank you, Eshonai!" Dalinar said. He gave her a double thumbs up and then they did their secret handshake, the version with the elbow bumps. "You're the best!"

"That's why I'm the best man!" said Eshonai and they both had a hearty chuckle at her expert use of humour. "No, but really, we should get going," she said firmly. She checked the door but couldn't hear Kaladin, so she opened it and they slipped through. Dalinar tried not to skip because the shardplate might launch him through the ROOF due to the spring in his step.

"Don't be nervous," Eshonai assured him.

"I'm not nervous!" he explained. "I'm just super super super excited, pal." He beamed so much that if his smile had been an actual physical beam, like a laser beam, he would have destroyed everything in his path. But because it was a beam of happiness it just made everybody who saw it felt like they'd been shot in the heart with a laser beam of joy. It also made the sun shine brighter and if he'd smiled on a patch of fertile ground, who knows? Maybe there would finally be flowers growing on Roshar. a horse whinnied in the background. it seemed like that mare willed for flowers!11! Kaladin and his imaginary friend Kelsier laughed, even further in the background... Had he made a joke? What was funny?

Anyway, so Eshonai went up the stairs and Dalinar metaphorically floated a foot above them all the way to the roof of the building, where the wind violently blustered through the mountains but was kept away from the building by a whole bunch of weird wind fabrials that Navani had made accidentally while trying to find a fabrial design that would make Elhokar eat his vegetables. They made it only pleasantly breezy on the top of the building, and that made the tasteful decorations flutter and show off their cool designs and expert deployment of Gestalt laws. Anyway. There were doves that had gold leaf on their wings to make them even more beautiful and romantic! It also stopped them flying away. They milled about underfoot, limply flapping their beautiful wings. They had a similar expression to Adolin when he wore his Shardplate without the belly plates so it looked like he was wearing a crop top. It was a cool look, but extremely uncomfortable. The doves added an ambiance that suited the classy nature of the event and a whimsy that hinted at the nature of love, uniting the two in a poignant cocktail of subtle flavour. There were golden streamers draped over everything in sight, including the guests.

Dalinar looked around for Navani but he couldn't see her! He sauntered up to the altar expecting her to pop out of nowhere and shout "surprise!" as she put him in a tight headlock, like she usually was uncannily good at surprise attacks. He and Eshonai had rose petals thrown over them by Bridge 4, who had lined the aisle with baskets and baskets of flowers. All of the former bridgemen were participating except Lopen the one armed Herdazian who was carrying a velvet cushion with the rings resting on it. He had an eyepatch now, and it was made of fine velvet in a complementary primary colour for the occasion. He had lost his eye in the same traumatic, but heroic episode that he had lost Righty 1.0 in. He still had the left arm he affectionately called 'Lefty 2.0' which he'd regrown in a freak highstorm. Its nails were a similar shade to the eyepatch. That man knew how to coordinate an outfit, Dalinar thought appreciatively. Hang on, he was getting _married_ and he was thinking about other men? No, this Highprince had eyes only for... his bride...

"Where is Navani?" Dalinar asked with a sad and quavery voice, turning to Eshonai and the former-bridgemen-former-bodyguards-turned-florists. Just at that moment the carpet behind the altar moved! Navani slid out from underneath. She snuck so quietly up behind him that she could have stuck a dagger between the fourth and fifth rib and he wouldn't even have noticed! She wore a long white dress with a train at least as long as the line made if each member of Bridge Four held hands (except Lopen who only has one hand). Her bridesmaids, Jasnah and Hoid, had to use stormlight, or other investitures, just to be able to carry it. Navani tapped Dalinar on the shoulder and he spun around enthusiastically. If he'd put more thought into it, he could have made it a really amazing pirouette.

"NAVANI!" he shouted with intense, all consuming glee. She looked so beautiful that if she'd walked into a room everyone in it would faint. Good thing she'd been hiding and then crawled into the room, everyone was safe. Her dress was covered in sequins and diamonds and all of them were filled with stormlight so that she literally glowed. Her hair was done up in a style so complex that it made Pattern, sitting in the fourth row back, in between Kabsal and Shallan, jealous, but in a respectful way.

At that VERY MOMENT Kaladin and Adolin walked in at the same time, Adolin fashionably late, Kaladin accidentally so because it had taken him so long to paint a perfect copy of his guards uniform on underneath his tightly fitting suit. They looked at each other, scandalised. They were wearing perfectly tailored, perfectly fitting suits…that matched, perfectly.

"You're wearing my suit!" they yelled simultaneously.

"No I'm not! Shallan had this made for me!" they both yelled back. Shallan, immaculately dressed and primly seated beside Pattern, smiled indulgently like a mastermind of plans whose plans are going to plan and are perfectly executed. This prank had been five years in the making, and besides, she'd always wanted to see her boys in hot matching outfits. She had tried to pressure Dalinar and Navani to get married sooner, because she'd been so keen to see it happen and so worried that the boys would grow so muscular that they wouldn't be able to fit into the suits no matter how they were altered, but Dalinar had firmly told her he needed to prepare the perfect engagement scenario and that had taken three years. It had taken another two years for the technology that allowed gold leaf to be applied to dove wings to be developed, and you couldn't have a wedding without _that._ You just couldn't.

Shallan's own wedding to Kabsal had gone without, but there was so much jam that it kind of made up for it. Unfortunately a lot of people had died of some kind of sickness after the wedding. She and Kabsal had also adopted Pattern as their son. What crazy days.

Adolin and Kaladin tried firstly to get each other to go home and change, and when that failed they tried to physically remove each other's suits but in a really angry way. They solved their difference when somebody in the audience managed to offer to give Adolin a different coloured tie over all the cat calls and wolf whistles from the excited guests. It made his eyes look really good so he put that on instead.

Kaladin, finally not distracted by Adolin's suit, whipped his head around like a man sensing assassins. His hair looked really good when he did that, but there was no time to do the same head whip three or four times and maybe get a watercolour of the moment done. He tore off the top half of his suit, revealing his strangely realistic painted-on uniform, and pelted down the aisle with stormlight-enhanced speed. Yelling, "THE ASSASSIN IN WHITE!" he dive tackled Navani off the podium and the two of them wrestled. Dalinar tried to pull them apart but Navani did a really cool flip and landed ten metres away on top of the wedding presents table.

Dalinar's emotions warred inside him. On one hand, he wanted to tell Navani how awesome that flip was. On the other hand, he wanted to make Kaladin say sorry for attacking his wife to be. On the third hand, which was Eshonai's hand which she held out for him to use, he wanted Navani and Kaladin to explain what was going on.

"What's going on?" he yelled. After years of parenting, he knew that good communication was always the priority in tense situations. Then, because Navani's flip had been really cool, he added, "and wow, Navani, that was a really cool flip!" He applauded her for a short time but not for too long, because he didn't want the focus to move to her flip instead of ANSWERS.

"She's the assassin in white!" Kaladin blustered exactly like a highstorm. "Look! She's _wearing white._ "

"Other people wear white too!" Dalinar said placatingly, backing his statement up with clear hand gestures.

"No they don't!" Kaladin said. "Whenever I find somebody wearing white I put them in prison, where they have to wear really drab grey clothes until they say sorry for making an assassin their fashion role model." Adolin ran up out of the audience to give him a high five and then went back to his seat. Adolin has strong feelings about people wearing white: I mean, it's pretty tacky usually? It takes a special sort of person to get wearing white _right_ , he himself being one, of course.

Navani looked out towards the dramatic moody horizon. The sun was setting because it sensed that this was something it didn't want to be around for. The wind whipped her hair and veil around her face but not in a way that obscured any of her amazing makeup. "I'm sorry, Dalinar," she said.

"Sorry for what?" asked Dalinar.

Navani turned around on top of the wedding gift table and met his eyes. "It's true, Dalinar. I am the Assassin in White. I've always been the Assassin in White."

"Noooooooooooo!" he yelled. "That's impossible!"

Navani looked sad and serious at the same time, like somebody who had a puppy that was taken away from them, only for a short amount of time, but they're still sad it's gone. "No, it's not," she said. "You always knew I was unhappily married to your brother. When the Parshendi offered me all that money… I couldn't say no."

"But the Assassin in White was a surgebinder!" Shallan yelled from the audience. She was so smart. Nothing ever slipped past her lightning-fast thinking reflexes. Kabsal patted her back in support. What a beautiful couple.

"How do you think I wear earrings?" Navani yelled. "I DON'T HAVE MY EARS PIERCED." The entire audience gasped. Kaladin shed a single, gleaming, intensely manly tear: he'd never so adamantly wanted to be wrong.

"You Lashed your earrings to your ears?" Kaladin asked. He was sort of impressed, despite his sadness and his overwhelming need to protect Dalinar at all costs.

"That's right!" Navani said. She looked back at Dalinar. "And then the Parshendi wanted me to assassinate you, too. I got close to you to kill you, Dalinar." She was crying but her makeup was waterproof.

"But we haven't been at war with the Parshendi for like? five years?" Dalinar said, asking his best man. Eshonai shrugged, they didn't like to talk about the war, it was like, their only rule. Don't talk about the war.

"I signed a really binding legal contract," Navani said. She pulled it out of her bodice. "Even though I fell deeply in forever love with you in the process and the war is over, I legally have to assassinate you. I just... wanted to be your wife first…"

It was the saddest thing Dalinar had ever heard, and he had heard some super sad things in his time. The second saddest was the story of how Lopen lost Righty 1.0, but there wasn't time for that now. His heart broke like a million tiny crying men with unbreakable hammers were focussing on all the weak spots in his heart and crying and hammering and crying and hammering. "But you can be my wife!" he cried, voice breaking in despair. "We can just forget about the law!"

Kaladin thought, 'ha ha, if only my spren friend Kelsiers was here to hear _that'_ but he kept his feelings to himself. Kelsier isn't a very good addition to weddings, not since his spren wife turned into a horse. Well, we think that's what happened? We're not really sure, but no one wants to hear about that noise, Kelsier, just… It's a wedding, lighten up.

"It's really precise!" said Navani, brandishing her contract in the air. "I'm sorry, Dalinar. My cover has been blown. I have to kill you now and then I'll fly away with my Windrunner powers and be a hermit on a mountain forever alone with my guilt and sadness and five year engagement that ended in you dying! BECAUSE OF ME!"

"Wait!" said Renarin who had been there the whole time of course. He had stormlight magical eyesight so he had like, all the different kind of vision, including x-ray and laser eyes. He still wore glasses though because everybody thought he looked really good in them. As the contract fluttered in the breeze he could see that the last page looked strange for some reason? "Mashala! How did you sign the contract?"

"As the Assassin in White," Navani said in her 'well duh' voice which Dalinar loved, like all of her. She was so beautiful.

"Well," he yelled, running across the tops of the church pews to join the drama at the altar, finally jumping and landing really dramatically and powerfully and with like four girls' spanreed numbers tucked in his pocket because of his amazing display of agility, handsomeness, and acrobatic prowess. "If you marry my father, then your name will _legally change_ from The Assassin in White to Navani Kholin-Kholin! It's the law!" he did a pose.

Navani's glistening violet eyes met Dalinar's eyes which are probably blue because why else would the Kholins all wear blue if it wasn't to highlight their eyes? They were both crying but now it was because Renarin had saved the day, and not because Navani was going to kill Dalinar.

"So if we get married I don't have to kill you," she whispered, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief. The acoustics were really good so they'd been able to hear everything.

"Yes," said Renarin. He high-fived himself for getting himself and Adolin a new mum. Then he high fived Adolin who was physically restraining Kaladin just in case he tried to kill Navani while she was still legally an assassin and not because Kaladin is almost impossible NOT to cling to and at this point Kaladin is adrenaline sweating through the uniform paint he's painted on himself. It was purely to protect Navani. "Hey let's get this marriage over pronto you guys," Adolin suggested, like a cool cat. He winked over his aviator sunglasses. Everybody within the wink radius started to fan themselves and make pleased little noises like "ooh!" And "oh my!" And "well I never!"

Kabsal was conducting the ceremony because he's an Ardent and that's pretty much all they do except for standing around and looking hot and thoughtful. He patted Pattern as he walked up to the front and told him, "I'm proud of you...son." Shallan's eyes filled with tears that she couldn't have forced down even if she'd wanted to.

Navani got off the wedding gift table, looking beautiful and radiant and in control. She walked up to the altar where Dalinar was and they held each other's hands and gazed into each other's eyes. The doves milled about their feet and cooed and the setting sun broke through the clouds and shimmered off the gold leaf, sending gold spangles of light dancing on every surface. Dalinar reached out and tenderly brushed away Navani's tears.

"Navani, I love you more than anything. I love you more than orange juice and I love you more than croissants and if there was a way to combine croissants and orange juice I know you would invent it and I would still love you MORE than that. I love you, you're my forever babe, babe."

Navani beamed emotionally. "Dalinar," she said, "if you were a fabrial you'd be a fabrial that creates love from nothing wherever it goes. It would be a perpetual motion machine for love, and even though that's physically impossible and a scientific abomination I would still love you enough to forget thermodynamics."

Dalinar and Navani's wedding vows were beautiful and so deep and personal and made everybody cry enough tears that the authorities had to come in and persuade everyone to stop crying or they'd have to evacuate the roof because they were afraid the water damage might make it collapse; it was unnecessary though because those Urithiru builders had known their business and had hosted enough emotional weddings up there that no one was in any danger from the infrastructure. Lopen brought the rings up on his well-coordinated cushion with his one hand and everybody was so focused on Dalinar and Navani that they didn't even notice the rings were there until he discreetly coughed. Obviously discretion DOESN'T run in the family because when everyone was finished sniffling and sobbing about the beauty of Dalinar and Navani they noticed that two of the bridesmaids were ALSO making out. Jasnah and Hoid had finally broken down their respective emotional barriers and accepted THEIR love for EACH OTHER and wow, they were inspiring almost half as much love emotions as the happy married couple. Give them time. This is only their first kiss, but soon they'll be inspiring the people around them as much as the Kholin-Kholins. It was a beautiful day, and none of them would ever forget it.

The end?


End file.
